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[SigmaFlash]

I wanted to bring up the current mercenary town rule and see what everyone else thinks about it.

Right now, any town being able to join any alliance on any continent feels like it hurts one of the main parts of Loka, which is loyalty to alliances and continents. The server has always felt better when towns had real ties to their alliance and continent, instead of everything becoming mainly town-based and temporary.

I understand the reason behind the rule. It makes it easier for certain groups to work on their towns, still participate in fights, and not feel locked out of content. That part makes sense. But before this rule, if a town wanted to fight somewhere else or switch sides, they had to make actual changes. They had to move, commit, and deal with the consequences of that choice. That made alliances feel more meaningful.

The issue is that mercenary towns allow way too much movement with very little commitment. For example, in just the last three months, one town(Valyria) was able to fight with Alexander on Ascalon, then fight with Kylaz on Garama against ArcherSquid, where around 200 people were brought to Garama even though only two towns were actually based there, and now fight on Kalros with Squid. That should not be possible from one town in such a short amount of time. At that point, it is basically a Loka world tour.

I also understand the counterargument that removing or limiting mercenary towns could force highly committed players to make towns on other continents. That could fill up the map and create more inactive or extra towns. But at the same time, the map is constantly being expanded as new biomes and areas get added, so I do not think that should be the main reason to keep the current system exactly as it is.

It is also much easier and healthier to track real movement over time. If players slowly move from continent to continent, build towns, make alliances, and commit to a side, that creates politics and consequences. That is very different from one large town being able to switch sides in the last five minutes of conquest truce and completely change the fight. One system creates long-term movement and commitment. The other creates sudden last-minute power shifts with barely any downside.

Another thing is that not having merc towns used to add real value to builder towns. When PvP groups needed to move continents, they needed an actual town to take care of them and support them. For example, when Valyria used Cryptic Cove to fight on Garama, that gave a builder town an important role in the war. Builder towns were not just side pieces. They became useful because larger groups had to rely on them if they wanted to operate on that continent.

BitS is another good example of this. My alliance was able to bring in towns like Sandsete, Yaddas, and Edgewind, which were more builder-focused towns, and those towns would actually warp and be part of the alliance. They had value because alliance slots were not only about stacking as many PvPers as possible. Builder towns could matter because they gave continent presence, support, infrastructure, and long-term identity to the alliance.

The whole idea of merc towns was supposed to make it easier for builders and smaller towns to get involved in wars, but I feel like it has almost done the opposite. Because of the max town rule, big alliances now have less room for actual builder towns unless they also bring a lot of active PvPers. If an alliance only has limited town slots, they are going to prefer towns with 20 active fighters over a builder town that mainly provides infrastructure, history, or continent presence.

I do agree that merc towns have had benefits. They have helped some people fight more easily and probably made conquest more accessible in certain situations. But what we have seen on Loka over time is pretty apparent. The current system makes alliances feel weaker, builder towns less valuable, and continent loyalty less meaningful.

If no changes are going to be made to Balak or the way mega fights work, then I think we should at least consider going back toward smaller, more alliance-based fights. The current system seems to push the server even further into massive fights with less loyalty and less meaning behind who is fighting for who.

I am not saying the rule has no benefits, but I do think it has changed the server in a way that needs to be looked at. Some real conquest change would be nice before the summer, whether that means limiting mercenary towns, adding cooldowns, making continent commitment matter more, or finding another way to bring back smaller and more meaningful fights, or even fixing or revamping the big fights.

What does everyone else think? Should mercenary towns stay the way they are, be limited, or should we move back toward a system where alliance loyalty and continent commitment matter more? Should Cryptite add more objectives to conquest?

 

[mimo4]

2 merc town limit as currently its like 4-5

otherwise pointless

I’d go as far as to say it should be a limit of 1 merc town per alliance and some sort of financial penalty imposed on the merc town or the alliance taking them (since the alliance would be “hiring” mercenaries afterall)

 

[LightAndDqrk]

I’d go as far as to say it should be a limit of 1 merc town per alliance and some sort of financial penalty imposed on the merc town or the alliance taking them (since the alliance would be “hiring” mercenaries afterall)

great idea !!

 

[czmpos]

I’d go as far as to say it should be a limit of 1 merc town per alliance and some sort of financial penalty imposed on the merc town or the alliance taking them (since the alliance would be “hiring” mercenaries afterall)

Mimo is smart, i like this.

 

[__Ske__]

Removing merc towns is a step back in lokas growth, not a step forward.

First of all, merc towns allow for more high quality towns to be built and maintained, instead of forcing people to hold 3 towns at the same time. In the recent times after merc towns were added, we've seen so many amazing towns being built, thanks to the fact that the people who stay in them can actually focus on making an amazing build instead of moving every few weeks, or missing out on conquest. If merc towns get removed, that goes out the window. You often won't be able to do both, unless you get a bit lucky and the fighting is happening on your continent. And all that in the name of what? "Continent Loyalty" Seeing people talking about loyalty to a minecraft continent made me geniuenly laugh. Continents aren't people, and people are what you can be loyal too. And that loyalty to groups of people and the towns they have built over the years would go out the window again, because they would be forced to either afk months and sit in that town, or abandon it. I also saw loyalty to alliances being mentioned but I dont really get that point, if someone stays in one alliance or switches them, it's up to that person really, and removing merc towns has exactly 0 impact on that. I suppose that's just something that chatgpt said to OP and he didn't bother editing it.
Back to my original point, and the direction that loka is heading towards. Loka in the recent years has been trying to become more approachable for new people. As example of changes in that direction I can mention the addition of yellow tag at RIs, or just working on expaning /help and stuff like that. So the general idea is to make loka more accessible, and so that the entry threshold isn't too high, but everyone who wants can play and enjoy Loka. Merc towns serve that purpose. They make it easier for groups of players to play without needing to waste time and energy on moving or making proxy towns. Also considering the higher costs of running a town nowdays, a newer group of people wouldn't be able to afford owning 3 towns, so that would force them to either stick to one continent and risk being forced to afk, or join someones town, and that isn't great for two reasons. If such a group has their own town, they are more likely to recruit and grow, but if they join some big town they will most likely just sit there and warp to fights. Other then that, when players jump between towns they are likely to get cashran. I very much doubt that a new player who wanted to move and got cashran would stick around and keep playing, so it's probably better to avoid that.
"...I think we should at least consider going back toward smaller, more alliance-based fights."
I'm sorry to be the one bringing bad news, but this won't happen. The community has since forever gravitated towards making 2 big sides that fight each other, and most people want to be a part of that giant conflict, so they all end up joining the towns that are in it. Yes we did have some 3-way months here and there but that was not an often occurence.
So, making conquest less accessible in the name of a role-play continent identity, and some uncs trying to chase nostalgia thinking that this change will make them enjoy gaming like they used to 5 years ago, is not worth it. In this thread I mainly see very old players, who have played for 5 years or more (with some exceptions ofc) and not a single person that I could call a new player. You could try to argue that people with more experience saw loka before this change and it was more fun (for them ofc, fun is pretty much always subjective), but corelation does not mean causation. The fact that you no longer love playing so much can have many different causes, and merc towns seem to be the scape goat that you try to blame everything onto, and you don't even consider the fact that you maybe just got burnt out, some of your friends quit, you just got bored or grew up where gaming is not and will not be as fun as it used to be.

What I can agree on is that conquest does require some changes to not get boring for the community as a whole. That is something that I believe was previously mentioned (and even Crypt talked about it in the past), that adding more objectives on the battlefield would be beneficial. Conquest wasn't designed for 400 player wars, when it came out there were never tripple-digit fights happening, now they happen all the time. So instead of coping and blaming a good change, I suggest brainstorming and figuring out how some new objectives could be implemented into conquest, because that is a change that would benefit loka, and reminiscing about old times and "continent identity" helps nothing.

 

[Cryptite]

I’d go as far as to say it should be a limit of 1 merc town per alliance and some sort of financial penalty imposed on the merc town or the alliance taking them (since the alliance would be “hiring” mercenaries afterall)

Why even have them at this point?

This is just such a tired post. I hate to be mean about it but we've seen the same variant of this post every 3-5 months since before and also after mercs was introduced. Every point for and against it has been litigated in this very thread, even. The rose-colored glasses are really what's at play here. What's really happening is that people attributing the "fun before mercs happened" as being proof that mercs are the problem.

And yet conveniently everybody (said this 25 times before) forgets that proxy towns were literally the meme of the server for years. There is a romanticism at play here where "it was all good in the before-time because that's when things were fun". Except for every player, things were "most fun" when they were much newer to the server, or had cohesive, coordinated, and meaningful Alliances.

Nothing about mercs made alliances better or worse. I understand the argument about continent loyalty not being what it once was but this is a sentiment shared, unfortunately, among the vast minority of actual invested players (town owners, etc). The vast majority of the fluid, logon playerbase has not, and never will care where the war is or which town they're on. Even in the separate post suggesting Alliances be wholly removed, this would never change the behavior of logons. The same group of players is largely still around, they've all moved between all continents each time.

If players slowly move from continent to continent, build towns, make alliances, and commit to a side, that creates politics and consequences

This is theorycrafting, not reality. I hate to say it but this is a subjective sentiment that you (and me) wish were true. The reality of most Alliances are far less created through roleplay and are really just the result of beef and hatred of specific players/leaders.

These consequences amounted mostly to just being annoyed at having to leave the town you actually care about and moving your stuff back and forth over and over. The playerbase was practically begging for mercs as a result of this.

That is very different from one large town being able to switch sides in the last five minutes of conquest truce and completely change the fight. One system creates long-term movement and commitment. The other creates sudden last-minute power shifts with barely any downside.

Does it though? Last minute betrayals and power shifts are possible with or without mercs.

Another thing is that not having merc towns used to add real value to builder towns. When PvP groups needed to move continents, they needed an actual town to take care of them and support them. For example, when Valyria used Cryptic Cove to fight on Garama, that gave a builder town an important role in the war. Builder towns were not just side pieces. They became useful because larger groups had to rely on them if they wanted to operate on that continent.

I'm sure for a few builder towns this may have been true but I don't think the general sentiment of proxy towns was that they were all kindly builder towns as opposed to just husks of towns being held by inactive players.

BitS is another good example of this. My alliance was able to bring in towns like Sandsete, Yaddas, and Edgewind, which were more builder-focused towns, and those towns would actually warp and be part of the alliance. They had value because alliance slots were not only about stacking as many PvPers as possible. Builder towns could matter because they gave continent presence, support, infrastructure, and long-term identity to the alliance.

I just don't see what builder towns even has to do with this. The idea of proxy towns doesn't require it to be, or not be some sort of neutral/pve/builder/whatever town. The beauty of mercs is that often players who want to be in builder towns also sometimes like to fight and can do so now without having to leave or move.

Again this whole post is a very nostalgic view on your personal take on how life used to be for you. I and many others remember things very differently.

What I generally agree with is that mercs destroys continent loyalty. but mercs was the result of the community asking for it. If they felt so strongly about continent loyalty, mercs would not have been added as a feature.

Now I think the one thing that hasn't been thought about in all of these discussions around mercs is the only thing I would argue has legitimately changed over the past 3-4 years and that's the size of the server. Loka is constantly growing and there are way more players around than there were before. In my view any removing/nerfing of mercs as a whole could potentially make more sense when Loka is So Big that each continent can healthily stand alone with its own conflicts. This will never stop there being 2 big sides on 1 continent where the majority of the playerbase wants to be, but it could let the other two continents have legitimate conflicts enough that mercs wouldn't be needed to let everybody "just have fun and fight". I just don't think we're there yet.

 

[BIGSIZZLEE]

Why even have them at this point?

This is just such a tired post. I hate to be mean about it but we've seen the same variant of this post every 3-5 months since before and also after mercs was introduced. Every point for and against it has been litigated in this very thread, even. The rose-colored glasses are really what's at play here. What's really happening is that people attributing the "fun before mercs happened" as being proof that mercs are the problem.

And yet conveniently everybody (said this 25 times before) forgets that proxy towns were literally the meme of the server for years. There is a romanticism at play here where "it was all good in the before-time because that's when things were fun". Except for every player, things were "most fun" when they were much newer to the server, or had cohesive, coordinated, and meaningful Alliances.

Nothing about mercs made alliances better or worse. I understand the argument about continent loyalty not being what it once was but this is a sentiment shared, unfortunately, among the vast minority of actual invested players (town owners, etc). The vast majority of the fluid, logon playerbase has not, and never will care where the war is or which town they're on. Even in the alternative thrThe same group of players is largely still around, they've all moved between all continents each time. What has changed seems to be

This is theorycrafting, not reality. I hate to say it but this is a subjective sentiment that you (and me) wish were true. The reality of most Alliance Discords has far less roleplay and a lot more just beef-based hatred-powered Alliances.

These consequences amounted mostly to just being annoyed at having to leave the town you actually care about and moving your stuff back and forth over and over. The playerbase was practically begging for mercs as a result of this.


Does it though? Last minute betrayals and power shifts are possible with or without mercs.


I'm sure for a few builder towns this may have been true but I don't think the general sentiment of proxy towns was that they were all kindly builder towns as opposed to just husks of towns being held by inactive players.

I just don't see what builder towns even has to do with this. The idea of proxy towns doesn't require it to be, or not be some sort of neutral/pve/builder/whatever town. The beauty of mercs is that often players who want to be in builder towns also sometimes like to fight and can do so now without having to leave or move.

Again this whole post is a very nostalgic view on your personal take on how life used to be for you. I and many others remember things very differently.

What I generally agree with is that mercs destroys continent loyalty. but mercs was the result of the community asking for it. If they felt so strongly about continent loyalty, mercs would not have been added as a feature.

Now I think the one thing that hasn't been thought about in all of these discussions around mercs is the only thing I would argue has legitimately changed over the past 3-4 years and that's the size of the server. Loka is constantly growing and there are way more players around than there were before. In my view any removing/nerfing of mercs as a whole could potentially make more sense when Loka is So Big that each continent can healthily stand alone with its own conflicts. This will never stop there being 2 big sides on 1 continent where the majority of the playerbase wants to be, but it could let the other two continents have legitimate conflicts enough that mercs wouldn't be needed to let everybody "just have fun and fight". I just don't think we're there yet.

so many words...

 

[Inapplicable]

sigma came back to kalros for ONE WEEK and already decided he never wants it to be a possibility again

 

[ThePigGang]

This is just such a tired post. I hate to be mean about it but we've seen the same variant of this post every 3-5 months since before and also after mercs was introduced. Every point for and against it has been litigated in this very thread, even. The rose-colored glasses are really what's at play here. What's really happening is that people attributing the "fun before mercs happened" as being proof that mercs are the problem.

And yet conveniently everybody (said this 25 times before) forgets that proxy towns were literally the meme of the server for years. There is a romanticism at play here where "it was all good in the before-time because that's when things were fun". Except for every player, things were "most fun" when they were much newer to the server, or had cohesive, coordinated, and meaningful Alliances.

Nostalgia has been the driving factor behind this topic for most players, but I do think the continental loyalty argument is valid enough to warrant a conversation. For reference, I do not think limiting or removing merc towns is the solution. The following is what I think the main sentiment players align with that does not stem from the romanticization of the past.

I own Ascalon, Sigma owns Garama. Defending against an attacking alliance on my respective continent is fun and rewarding, but it's more rewarding for me to walk over to Garama and knock Sigma off his capital. Winning Balak is one thing, but to take an alliance's ability to even fight on Balak just feels like a better win, considering more was on the line. Leaving Ascalon to fight somewhere else means relinquishing the capital of Ascalon for me. I need to beat Sigma on Garama to even be capital, otherwise, I'll have moved for nothing. It's also a lot more rewarding for Sigma to defend against me than any smuck already established on his continent. The fact that continental fighting involves so much more fighting simply because more attacks are allocated is also what makes it so much more fun than just fighting Sigma on Balak. Note that this was only possible because individuals defined their continent's identity, so fighting on a continent was more like fighting a fixed, specific group. The merc system changed this.​

This is the best example I can come up with, as I believe it's objectively true. Winning like that means more than just winning on Balak. It is an incredibly rewarding win while also a completely devastating loss. The fact that proxy towns even existed, and the extent of overcrowding they caused, proves how much people enjoyed this type of conquest. That said, they were ultimately too easy to run and became a nuisance as the server's population grew.

My point is to prove that not all examples of players finding the past more fun are rooted in nostalgia; there are legitimate game design changes that altered conquest dynamics, arguably for the worse. How can we bring this aspect back without just fully reverting to the past?

When we look at how the merc system has affected this, what is the solution for retaining merc towns and revitalizing continental loyalty?

The solution is to encourage winning, which as a result would discourage wanting to be a merc town. Winning has not really meant shit except bragging rights for a while now, but I feel the playerbase has reached a point of boredom for quite some time. I'm not sure if it's already like this, but merc towns should not be eligible for continent policy benefits if their alliance wins, since they do not reside on the winning continent. That should be the price to pay as a merc town. Policies must be buffed so that the 3 capitals are sought after without question. It should be a hard decision for me to give up potential capital policy benefits by competing on my own continent rather than as a merc town on another. Currently the only downside is not being able to take tiles which is inconsequential. Resource gathering is easier and more abundant than ever, and not having tiles for a month is not an issue.

This would increase competitiveness, garner loyalty, and allow towns to fight across continents during the slower months.

but mercs was the result of the community asking for it. If they felt so strongly about continent loyalty, mercs would not have been added as a feature.

Who was to know what the long-term effects of the merc system would be? It was a great idea. I doubt a majority of the playerbase could have sat down and predicted this.

 

[koi0001]

That being said I feel a change is necessary because the political side of the server had an art to it that has been missing for a long time. Merc towns have been a recurring topic since the system’s inception, but I don’t think simply removing merc towns is the answer. The solution needs to continue solving the original problems while also addressing the current lack of commitment.

At the end of the day, it comes down to perspective. How important is the political side of conquest to you? Is it worth more than the convenience that merc towns provide?

I think this guy got it pretty well. I hear so much about nostalgia goggles; I've heard that for a couple of years, which is what I'd say is some well-meaning bulverism.

At one time, Loka felt like a server built around roleplayers, builders, and more grounded or serious PvPers. Over time, it shifted toward primarily catering to a PvP-oriented playerbase, which is ultimately fine if that’s the direction the server wants to pursue. The version of the server that prioritised town ownership, progression, immersive town-building, and roleplay no longer feels like Loka. In many ways, that identity was traded for broader player retention and accessibility, which I understand, and honestly, I’m not sure the server could have grown any other way.

The system of mercenary towns works better for the hundreds of players that Loka wants to play, and frankly, I'm not sure removing it or limiting it will even fix the problem older players feel the server has at this point.

I can imagine a very unlikely future where there are two versions of Loka, one for PvP and one more oriented towards PvE and roleplayers; I think this is the server that a lot of the dissatisfied crowd would gravitate towards. I know it's what I would. This whole idea is pie in the sky, of course, right now.

Just my two shards.